In the world of ballet, this is squaring up to be Lewis Carroll's year. Two high-profile productions of Alice in Wonderland will be premiered, both by British choreographers.

The Royal Ballet's production is the first new full-length work to be created at Covent Garden since 1995. Playwright Nicholas Wright has the none-too-easy task of creating a dynamic, engaging heroine for the ballet – one who grows and changes through the course of her adventures, and not merely as result of hallucinogenic substances. This will be one of the last works to be commissioned by Monica Mason before she retires as the Royal Ballet's artistic director.

By a strange coincidence, another production of Alice will also be Ashley Page's last creation for Scottish Ballet before he too leaves the company (an unwilling departure into which he was recently manoeuvered by his board). Given Page's past form, this production is likely to be more fantastical and heretical than its Royal rival. Page and his long-term collaborator, Antony McDonald, will be filtering a kaleidoscope of cultural and visual references into the story – starting with the opening scene, where Alice falls into Wonderland through the outsized lens of a Victorian camera.

This battle of the two Alices will have wider resonances. Mason's departure from the Royal in 2012 leaves the post of artistic director wide open, and Page is likely to be discussed as a candidate for the job. Other contenders for the longlist may include Wayne Eagling, artistic director of English National Ballet; Deborah Bull, creative director at the Royal Opera House; and Tamara Rojo and Johan Kobborg, two dancers with directorial visions.

The year's theatre highlights

America's national ballet company brings two cherry-picked programmes to London, headed by Seven Sonatas, the latest creation from artist-in-residence Alexei Ratmansky. New to London, too, is Benjamin Millepied's Everything Doesn't Happen At Once plus ABT's production of Company B, a tribute to the Andrews Sisters and wartime spirit. This short season also features works by Balanchine, Antony Tudor and Twyla Tharp.

It's difficult to predict what a new work by William Forsythe will look like, given his recent incursions into art installation and film. This piece, I Don't Believe In Outer Space, features a cast of 14 dancers, and promises a very personal perspective on the frailty and tenacity of human life.

David Nixon, Northern Ballet Theatre's director, has created versions of Dracula and Wuthering Heights; this year, he turns to Cleopatra, femme fatale of the ancient world. The score is by Claude-Michel Schönberg, composer of Les Misérables.

The French equestrian artist Bartabas makes a unique type of theatre. Featuring live horses on stage, it's a fusion of dance, music, acrobatics and dressage. His latest work, The Centaur and the Animal, is a collaboration with veteran butoh dancer Ko Morubushi; its slow, poetic exchange of animal and human personalities has moments of astonishing beauty.

Glasgow's Theatre Royal has teamed up with Matthew Bourne's New Adventures company to mark the centenary of William Golding's birth. Using both professional performers and local dancers, Bourne's adaption of Golding's classic morality tale transfers the action from a desert island to a deserted theatre.

One of the year's wilder collaborative enterprises: a full-length piece of dance theatre, based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale, jointly created by the Pet Shop Boys and maverick choreographer Javier De Frutos.